About
On my apartment wall hangs an old black and white photo of my parents. Ireland, taken sometime in the early 1960's. With their movie star looks, they look so young and beautiful. My father always looks good in a blazer and the Irish fisherman's sweater is a great look. I love how the white cardigan is trying to tame my mother's poofy skirt and how her dark hair frames her innocent, yet cheeky, smile. Such unbridled hope could break your heart.
Or rather it does mine. You see, my mother, Rita, is very sick and lives some eighteen miles away in a quiet New Jersey town, in the house I grew up in. She has basically been bedridden for…I actually don’t know how long. Time in the world of the very sick moves so slowly. Sadly, it is hard to remember when she was not like this. Her piercing blue eyes have lost their sight and she barely talks. I wish I knew what she was thinking or how she manages to not go crazy from one long day that blurs slowly, indistinctly into another.
In my youth I thought that my mother was cool, but more often thought that I was more like my father, demanding and exacting. I have since embraced that I am more like Rita and that I have her wanderlust trait.
When she was strong and fit, she loved adventure and was always on the go. But the wanderlust is more complicated than simply the ‘doing,’ being busy, or in her case the ‘shopping marathons.’ Every Saturday she always made sure to swing over to Bergenfield to get us bread. I cannot describe the restless drive that gave her energy for these long Saturday outings, but I feel it. Ironically, through her illness, I am learning to be more patient. Let us consider this blog a love letter to Rita because she always enjoyed a good story, the poetry, and dance of words. And ultimately, it is because of her that I hunt for well-done, darkly baked bread. En avant.
